etzee

Can I sell plants or seeds?

Mostly yes, and the problem is rarely the rules — it is the courier and the week in a box.

The Metzee team15 Oct 20262 min read

Mostly yes. Ordinary houseplants, cuttings, bulbs, seeds and garden plants are allowed, and Home & Garden is where they sit.

The difficulties here are practical far more often than legal.

What is not allowed

  • Protected and endangered species, including wild-collected orchids, cycads and succulents
  • Anything dug from the wild rather than grown
  • Cannabis and other controlled plants, in any form, including seeds
  • Plants requiring a phytosanitary certificate you do not have, which is mostly an import question

Wild-collected succulents and orchids are the one to watch: a plant sold as rare is sometimes rare because it was taken.

The real problem: it is alive and in a box

A plant does not survive the ordinary delivery assumption.

Your dispatch time is the whole game. A cutting posted same-day arrives; one posted on day three does not. Set a short dispatch deadline on these and keep it. How to set your dispatch deadline

Weekends and holidays kill parcels. A plant posted on Friday sits in a depot. Do not post before a closure.

Heat is worse than cold here. A box in a van in May is an oven.

Couriers can refuse perishables, and may decline a parcel it is perfectly legal to send.

How to sell them well

Seeds and bulbs rather than plants, where you can. They post like any small object, they do not wilt, and the returns problem disappears.

Bare-root and wrapped, for cuttings. Lighter, cheaper and more likely to arrive alive than a pot of wet soil.

Say what arrives. "A rooted cutting, two leaves, about 10 cm" prevents the commonest dispute in this category, which is a buyer expecting the photographed parent plant.

Photograph the actual plant, not a mature specimen. How to write a condition description

When one arrives dead

It is treated like any damaged item — the buyer raises it from the order, and a faulty or not-as-described item can come back for 7 days whatever your policy says.

Which is why the honest description matters more here than almost anywhere: "may lose leaves in transit, will recover" sets an expectation that survives a bad week. How refunds work

Pickup is the better answer

For anything large, leafy or fragile, offer collection. No courier, no box, no week. How to offer pickup

More: prohibited items explained, how to pack an order, fragile item delivery.

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